So this is a thread I've been debating about doing for a while. We have the existing last game you played thread which has become the default gaming discussion thread, but I'm also conscious of hijacking it and posting stuff which nobody cares about. If I post stuff here that nobody cares about, at least it's in my own space.

So what is the point of this thread? If I have free time and I'm alone, I'm going to be gaming. It's something I've been doing since I was about 4 years old and at 26, I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. With all of the games comes lots of fun little stories, or observations as well as just general thoughts. This thread will be my own little space to ramble on about the things I care enough to post about.

I'm currently on my winter holidays from university and I have way too much free time so now is as good a time as any to start this thread. One thing I struggle with is attention and focus. I start games but find myself switching between them quite a lot. Right now I am alternating between WoW, Final Fantasy X and Spec Ops: The Line. I had been playing a lot of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 but I had to reinstall windows on my pc. To my dismay, i discovered that the steam cloud save only works for games which were built around steam as a platform (which is 90-95% of pc games). Given that KOTOR came out in 1999, it's no surprise it isn't compatible with steam saves. I wasn't prepared to go through the first 20 hours again, so I'll have to come back to this down the road. I have several other games which I have started and I am itching to finish such as GTA V, The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, South Park Stick of Truth, Far Cry 3, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and way too many more. Eventually I'm going to finish every one of them.

For those interested in my game collection and other little tidbits, my steam profile is worth a visit

So that's pretty much the gist of things. I'll get things started in the next post.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

Given that I have free time and I'm not rushed to do things, I have been trying other games outside of my usual focus. My friend from the USA bought a discounted Civilisation 6, but to her horror it wasn't redeemable in the USA. That got handed over to me and she shrugged and bought the full price version. Yesterday we were playing that for a good while and it's something I'm going to dive deep into at some point.

Steam also does lots of weekend game trials. Currently, The Division is having a free to play weekend. I know that the Division was a blockbuster game with a huge amount of development behind it, but I was never intrigued enough to look into it in detail. I know that it is a third person shooter, real world based mmo but that was it. There was nothing about it that screamed "pay attention to me". I figured it'd be something to take a look at later, and now is that time.

The first thing that struck me was the HUD. There is so much minimalistic detail. It reminds me a lot of Assassin's Creed (which isn't a surprise since both games are made by Ubisoft). Every place that can be crouched behind or crawled onto has a visual element, but only if you are looking in that direction. It's very unintrusive. The menus for character development such as skills and gear are bursting to life with detail and beauty. It's clear that a ton of love has been poured into this game.

However, the story is pretty minimal. I assume that since it is a Tom Clancy branded game that there is likely a book associated with it, but should I have to read that book to have to understand my characters purpose of being in this city and doing the things he is expected to do? Why has New York gone crazy? Is the rest of the country as wild as this?

Something which took a while to get used to also was the fact that the enemies don't take damage as you would expect from a regular shooter. Bullets to the head are not an instant kill, instead each bullet does x amount of damage and the enemies have fixed health points. Initially I thought this was really strange, until I remembered this was an mmo and instant kills could be abusable as far as preventing others from doing what they want to do, or making encounters designed for multiple real players too easy.

It's a testament to how impressive the game plays that it feels as if it could be a standalone single player game. It's similar to Destiny in that regard, but Destiny is a sci fi fantasy game, it's easier to accept that an alien won't die to bullets in the head. The enemies have somewhat restrictive combat abilities given that they are designed to fight several players at once, but they still behave as I would expect them to in a single player game. They try to surround you, they take cover intelligently and they aren't easy to pick off. It's always a moderate challenge which stops the game from becoming repetitive.

This is a game that I feel I could really sink my teeth into, but I'm hesitant to keep playing because of knowing that it is only a trial weekend. I'm not prepared to buy the game right now since I have too many other games to focus on, so I'll essentially be wasting time by putting effort into something I'll lose access to tomorrow. I enjoyed what I played and I'm intrigued enough that I'll definitely get the game down the road.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

I now own Final Fantasy XV, but won't be able to play it until next week after promising a friend who is staying with me over Christmas that she can start it since I've played the demo.

Life is hard.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

I pre ordered FFXIII months ahead of time and was extremely disappointed. I learnt my lesson with FFXV (as well as being too busy at launch day to play) but tis the season and people insist on gifts (evil bastards).

I've heard nothing but good things about FFXV, but in fairness I haven't gone out of my way to find lots of reviews or player experience. My friend was going to buy it when she gets here because of how excited she is - She doesn't have a console of her own. Somebody beat her to the punch. That excitement is infectious and is what led to me picking this game over something else from the bossy, guilt inducing grandmother who wanted to get me a present. (she's great really)

So I did a small playthrough of CIV VI yesterday. 4 leaders, tiny map. One of my earliest experiences with PC gaming before I knew PC gaming was a thing was playing CIV II in my grandparents house with the games that came with their PC. I must have sunk thousands of hours into that game over about 8 years. I skipped III and IV due to not having a means of playing them. By the time I got to V, it was like a brand new experience. I never played a lot of V however, due to attention issues and way too many other games to play. However, the core experience was the same. Tile based, turn taking strategy, just a lot prettier and WAY more depth.

So here I am with Civ VI. At first it seemed frighteningly different to the previous games. The way the world around you is generated is different, and map you have explored is hidden if you have no friendly units nearby. A new non combat unit now exists specifically for tasks such as building farms or mines, but he can only do tasks 3 times each before being consumed. What and where to build suddenly becomes a vital part of your strategy. As well as that, each tile around cities is used for the construction of important city buildings, rather than them being a part of the same sqm of the city itself. This also has tactical significance because there are bonuses and penalties for where you place buildings. A church and a military encampment next to each other? Bad idea. A library and a university next to each other? A bonus to science. There is also much more focus on the type of government you wish to have (or at least I don't remember this from Civ V) and the types of bonuses you get for each government as long as you maintain the things your citizens want from that government.

Everything at once can be overwhelming, but it's very easy to get used to the adjustments. And all of that aside, at the core it's still the same tile based, turn taking strategy game that Civ II and Civ V were, and just as easy to get hooked. My only negative experience with the game is that out of nowhere it declared that the game was over, that I had lost. It played a cutscene of a destroyed city (which didn't match the technology era I was in) and that was it. It gave me no information. I don't know if it is a bug or if something happened. I had several cities, was not at war with anyone and was leading races for science and cultural victories. The lack of information is frustrating. The only thing I can think of if it isn't a bug is that maybe my capital city was invaded by a barbarian and perhaps that led to the loss, but my city is also defended so that shouldn't be the case. It left a bitter taste in my mouth and stopped me from wanting to go back immediately. I'd probably still be playing the next day if not for that.

Although to be honest, typing up this whole thing has me wanting to try again. I think I'll load up my auto save and see what happens from there.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

So I've established that I lost due to religion (why does that seem so ironic to post on this forum). It's extremely poorly explained and I had to spend time looking online for the cause. As well as just blankly telling me I lost, it didn't say who won or how either. I can't understand the logic behind omitting that information.

I tried another game and this time I focused on military domination. I was playing as Brazil (randomly selected) and I was parked next to a City State (a pretend country with just one city at all times) and USA. I spent half my game taking over the City State and the other half working out that ranged units can't take over cities and then having all my melee dudes killed on the way to the city. Whilst all of that was happening, a country was sending religious units around the map. I understood that these units can change the religion of a city (you have to pick your own religion and can make a custom one, ideally all cities will follow the religion of your country). Now I understand the purpose of this. By converting all of the cities of the countries attacking each other (me and USA) to their religion without getting involved in the combat, they were able to stealthily and peacefully win the game.

Now that I'm aware of it, it adds an extra level of strategy to focus on. I completely ignored religion because I didn't understand the ingame importance of it. Man, modern Civilisation games are worlds away from Civ II where I would just rush units onto a city sqm over and over until I captured the city.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

I now own FFXIII-3. I moderately enjoyed FFXIII, despite it being a disappointment in comparison to the previous games. I cared about the characters and wished to experience the story all the way through. I never finished FFXIII-2 on ps3 before selling the console when I got my ps4. I acquired both games through steam and I now have the complete trilogy.

In addition I picked up the first chapter of the revamped Hitman series and a bunch of other games I don't care about in a Square Enix mystery box that they release annually. I'm mildy intrigued by the revamp, especially the claim of complete freedom in how every single level is approached.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

One of the advantages of designing pc games around steam as a platform is the integration of the features that come with steam. Chat with friends, achievement guides, an ingame overlay command that can show you the community around the game such as discussions, guides, pictures and videos.

One thing unique to steam are steam trading cards. Developers can choose to have their game come with digital trading cards which are obtainable from playing any purchased game for a handful of hours. As easy as that. You'll only ever drop (roughly) 3/5 of the available cards, and duplicates are possible. So gamers are required to trade with each other for a complete set. A complete set will grant your steam account "exp". Steam account levels offer you profile bonuses every 10 levels, such as showcases for achievements or screenshots.

On my profile I have a showcase for my rarest earned achievements, which shows the % of players that have obtained it (who have to have actually played the game, rather than just own it). For example, my rarest achievement is (ironically) suplex city for WWE 2K16 which 1% of players own.

However, what do you do if you don't want your cards or have no cards to trade? Easy, you buy and sell them. Cards can be bought and sold for literal pennies. However, all of the pennies add up when you add hundreds of batches of them together, which leads to the purpose of this post.

I just purchased Deus EX: Mankind Divided for essentially £0.48. Over the last few months, I have made over £12 in trading card sales, and today only Deus Ex is at a 67% discount. Ordinarily it is £39.99, which puts the discounted price at £13.19, and me needing to pay 48p of my own money to purchase the game.

Another game for my ever increasing collection. I'll play them all eventually.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

As great as Steam is as a platform, it comes with the huge flaw of being dependent on working servers and a working internet connection. If you don't have one of these, you are limited in what you can do. Playing a game that only uses online saves? You can't access your save file. Got a game that needs patching? You can't download a patch manually as you would for a game on console or outside of Steam so too bad. Got a game that requires you to sign in through Steam to prove you are the owner of the account? Tough luck.

Steam was down for about 2-3 hours today. It's a rare occurrence, but when you have an average of 8-10 million people online at any point, those couple of hours are potentially catastrophic. Consoles can suffer from similar issues of course, but that is negated by generally still being able to access the offline portion of the game.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

On the topic of gaming, Christmas is keeping me busy and I hate settling down to commit to a game, only to have to keep getting up. So instead I've been exploring the realm of infinite games, generally known as clicker games. The concept of these games is that they have no end, but you are always able to progress. I was first introduced to a game called clicker heroes. You start off at level 1, and there is an enemy on the screen. You damage it with clicks until it is defeated. You gain gold for defeating it and then you move on to the next level. Once you have earned enough gold, you can purchase heroes. These heroes do damage automatically, you don't need to click for them to work.

Each hero purchased can also be improved with levels, with fixed increments granting special abilities and bonuses. Every 5th and 10th level will have a boss which needs to be defeated within 30 seconds. After 100 levels, every 10th boss will drop something known as hero souls, with increasing increments the further into the game you get. Eventually you will reach a point that you can't surpass a boss without earning days worth of gold. At that point you can "reset" your game, but keeping all of your hero souls. For every soul you have, your heroes will do 10% increased damage. This means you will progress through levels far quicker than before and surpass the limitations you encountered before.

And thus the game is an infinite loot of progression. There is no goal, but the progression is the appeal. Knowing you can always go further, always get stronger.

The concept is the same for all of the idle games. Infinite progression. Gameplay might be different across games, but you keep pushing as far as you can go. Currency is earned offline for all of these games, so you have a reason to keep going back and no need to keep the games open 24/7.

Right now I'm actively playing Clicker Heroes, Adventure Capitalist and Clicker Guild. I know that two of these are available on phone, and on my phone (unavailable on pc) I'm playing a game called Fiends Forever.

My Clicker Heroes game has been running for 809 days. I think I've gotten my moneys worth out of it. It was free.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

I'm getting sick of insolent teenagers ddosing game servers and services. I'm like, 95% sure PSN and Xbox Live and maybe Steam again, will go down on Christmas, lIke last year. DDoS attacks are fairly hard to block and they cripple a server until the flood of information can be stemmed.

The people that perpetrate these outages aren't trying to make a point, they do it because it's funny to them, to see people and children react to being unable to use their new stuff.

The thing is, servers are getting DDoSed almost 24/7. It takes an attack on a monumental scale to knock servers offline. It's hard to tell when a server is offline from DDoS, or from internal problems. With Steam last Christmas, it wasn't actually DDoS. The Christmas prior with Xbox and Playstation it was.

There are several people claiming responsibility for today, but until Steam officially states what happened then I am hesitant to blame it on DDoS.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

I started a quick game at about 11pm of Civ VI with religious victories disabled. My goal was to get a start established and continue tomorrow. It's now 1.51 am.

FML

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

At 2.30am of the next morning, I reached the timer limit of my game. Each turn counts as a year, and you have until 2050 AC to attempt to win the game. You start in the BC era, so it amounts to about 350 turns (I never bothered to check the exact amount).

So I picked a fully random map with random leaders. I ended up as Greece and was placed in an arctic region. This meant resources were scarce and I was isolated from other regions. I spent about 75% of my game just trying to survive against Barbarians that spawned on my land mass with me, and the rest of the game playing catch up with my cities that were unable to develop properly due to limited resources.

I'm taking this as an interesting challenge. I want to stick at this game until I win a game. I need to keep making tweaks to the game type such as removing religious victories and now increasing the game timer. I love the customisation that is available.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

A military FPS. You play as Delta Force in a fictional version of Dubai. As far as gameplay and mechanics go, this is a generic shooter. It offers nothing at all that other shooters don't already have, and doesn't do anything better either. Nothing is poorly executed though, and the game is fun from start to finish.

The true strength of the game and the reason that I purchased it, is the story. I've long heard about the moral ambiguity that is found throughout. It is difficult to explain the plot without spoiling important details. What I experienced was a story that left me unsure of who was the good guy and who was the bad guy and with moments of genuine horror of the war crimes committed

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Some of the crimes are committed by people who would be considered the good guys, who believed they were doing the right thing. The image of the dead mother holding her dead baby still haunts me

As I progressed through the game, I found myself doubting the morals of characters more and more and by the end I was left deep in thought as to who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. There is a reflection of your campaign but with the knowledge of the ending, and it puts everything in doubt. It really makes you question war itself as an entity.

A couple of small but greatly appreciated touches are how loading screens slowly evolve from giving you generic tips or story reminders, to giving you comments such as the death count of civilians in war followed by "but this is a game so go have fun!", or "do you feel like a hero?". The opening screen also slowly devolves from a soldier standing proudly with his flag with the sun shining brightly, until step by step of each successive game boot up, it turns into a corpse being eaten by birds, with the sun setting red.

The generic shooting was as fun as generic shooters can be, but the story really struck me hard. That alone boosts this fps ahead of other, better fps with better gameplay.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

The streaming service that allows you to play PS3 games on your PS4 and PC. I've been interested in this for a while but the price per month is a huge turn off at £14pm. However they offer a 7 day free trial and I finally decided to give it a try after a friend of mine saw that Silent Hill was offered and begged/demanded I get it for her.

Currently there is a library of over 300 games, with a ton of blockbuster games available such as Uncharted, The Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, Heavy Rain, Journey and tons more. For these titles alone, I do believe that the price is justified if you play them all and assuming you don't play any other games in that time period. The drawback is that the games are played via streaming, which means any internet disruptions will also negatively impact your gameplay. It's quite jarring to be playing smoothly and suddenly have latency and your game stutter and slow down. If you avoid latency, then the experience is identical to disc based gaming.

I never played myself, but I watched my friend playing Silent Hill 2. This is a game that originally debuted on PS2, with a "HD" remake for PS3. The game looks very aged and the control scheme is incredibly archaic, by 2017 standards. However, the mystery of the story, the genuine horrors of the enemies and aesthetics and the fairly frequent puzzles make this quite the fun experience.

I also downloaded Sonic Generations for my nieces and nephew to play. There was something jarring about switching from my PC playthrough to the PS Now playthrough. Perhaps the fps was higher/lower. It took me a while to adjust to what I was looking at. I've always struggled to tell the difference between 30fps and 60fps, so maybe fps wasn't the problem. However, the game was as smooth and responsive as it was on pc. I've given indepth thoughts on Sonic Generations in the main video game thread so I won't repeat them here, but it's a game that will get a lot of playthrough for the kids and myself. It's the type of gameplay that never gets old for me.

I've purchased one month of PS Now as a christmas present for the kids, so it's probable I'll give some of the other games a try. I'm not convinced that I'll purchase more time after the end of the month though. £14pm is too much on top of PS+, my phone bill and WWE Network.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

In recent years I've gotten into the habit of never skipping credits, just incase I miss something at the end. There was a specific game that I've long forgotten that upon a repeat playthrough followed by a bathroom break at the start of the credits, I realised I'd missed a story altering cutscene by skipping the credits.

I'm currently 20 minutes into the credits of the game I've just completed. I'm going to have to rethink my policy on not skipping. Fml.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

Part of my first ever bundle of games that I bought with my first foray into PC gaming. It's taken me just under two years, but I finally finished the game. This is one of the earliest victims of my "I'm going to try all of my new games and forget about ones I've already started".

FC3 is an fps, open world game that is based in fictional, nameless Mediterranean islands. I don't know how common fps open world games are, as far as I can recall this is my first. Third person shooters are a bit common, but I have no memory of playing one. Every single action in this game is done in first person, including cutscenes. From entering vehicles in a rush, to climbing on objects, to stabbing dudes in the back. For me, it was quite a unique experience.

Similar to my thoughts on Spec Ops: The Line, the actual gameplay of FC3 is a bit generic for the genre, but in no means does this retract from the fun. One unique thing (for games I have played at least) is the inclusion of wild animals in the world. The crafting system which allows for increased inventory and ammo space requires you to hunt specific animals for specific furs and skins. These range from simple dogs and boars, to tigers and bears, all the way up to hunting sharks in the middle of the sea. It's a fun element, hunting specifically for the thing that you wish to improve.

The world itself is gorgeous and one of my first appreciations of PC graphics. It is a bit dated, being four years old now, but as I started this game two years ago and was new to PC gaming, I was very impressed and still so today. As with any open world game, there is a ton of content to do. There are bases to capture, hidden objects to find, challenges to complete and the aforementioned crafting system. One of my favourite things to do was find radio towers. These are giant structures that need to be climbed and activated in order to reveal the local map. They are all something of a (not too difficult) puzzle. They are all slightly different, requiring you to think of how to climb the damaged structure. Keeping in mind the 100% first person view, climbing them is always a fun and somehow nerve wracking experience. I'd often go out of my way to find and climb towers just because I enjoyed them more than the other tasks.

The story itself is hit and miss. There are two main antagonists, the henchman and the boss. The henchman is a fucking psycho and a character that is genuinely believable and intimidating.

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He frequently asks you the ironic catchphrase of "Do you know that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same actions and expect different results? It wasn't until the third or fourth time that I realised the irony

The boss is generic and unbelievable. I was disappointed with both of the fights with these characters, despite them being intentionally different gameplay wise to the rest of the game. To me they were jarring and took me out of the moments that proceeds them.

The supporting cast are also hit and miss. You have friends and family who are with you, but the game thrusts you immediately into the action. There is zero character exploration or development. We are supposed to care about the brother or the girlfriend despite knowing literally nothing about them or the relationship that the protagonist has with them. I literally couldn't give a shit about the girlfriend asking you to not leave the area, because I had no reason to care. The islanders are different. We build up relationships with them from start to end and have reasons to care about them and what happens to them.

I was ultimately disappointed with the ending of the game. It seemed illogical to the story and what we knew of the characters, and then that was it. Game over. The final action scene before the final cutscene was also disappointing as there was no checkpoints in place which meant entire sequences needed to be repeated over and over on deaths. This is in contrast with earlier parts of the game in which the checkpoint system is seemingly always in place.

Overall I enjoyed my time with this game. I rushed to the end because of my huge library of games that I still wish to play, and feel I could have got a dozen more hours minimum out of the game from doing all of the optional objectives. However, this isn't a game that I will ever come back to. A game like Shadows of Mordor or MGS:V have an appeal to me that I will eventually come back to them, but FC3 just doesn't have the magic that makes me want to visit the island again.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

Right now I have a focus on finishing games that I have in progress. The immediate thoughts are GTA V, South Park SoT, Deus Ex (the 2000 original), Life is Strange and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. I think I will focus on games that I believe will have the shortest playtime.

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan